If you wondered what the “Obamagate” nonsense is about, don’t expect actual wrongdoing or even a logical narrative about what it all means. As impeached president Donald Trump said when asked by The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker what it was all about, all he could do was bluster, “You know what the crime is. The crime is…
Mike Pompeo has been using State Department facilities and funds for partisan political dinners
New reasons are emerging for why it was important that the inspector general of the State Department be removed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wasn’t just illegally using the State Department personnel to handle his personal errands—he turned taxpayer-funded dinners intended to support U.S. foreign policy objectives into a means of building his own political clout. Instead of…
Progressive lawmakers push to slash defense budget during pandemic
A bloc of progressive House lawmakers wants to slash the Pentagon’s budget in defense policy legislation, arguing extra money that would go toward military hardware would be better spent fighting the coronavirus. Twenty nine House Democrats insisted in a letter to leaders of the House Armed Services Committee that the National Defense Authorization Act should…
15 Republican State Attorneys General Call for Judge to Dismiss Case Against Michael Flynn
(WASHINGTON) — A group of 15 Republican state attorneys general filed an amicus brief Monday supporting the Justice Department’s motion to drop its case against former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn. The group, led by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, argues that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan should immediately grant the Justice Department’s…
Trump administration awards $350M contract to ramp up U.S. drug manufacturing
The Department of Health and Human Services Tuesday granted a four-year, $354 million contract to a new company in Virginia that will make drug ingredients and generic medicines as part of a wider push to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority’s award to Phlow can be extended for…
Biden campaign pressed on Latina VP prospects
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told allies in recent days that Joe Biden’s campaign has begun vetting her for vice president, according to a source familiar with the conversations. Harry Reid, the influential former Senate majority leader, has encouraged Biden, a friend, to consider Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. But as Latino lawmakers and donors…
Politics could dictate who gets a coronavirus vaccine
The promise of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year creates a difficult political and public health question: Who gets the vaccine first? Health care workers would be among the first to receive any vaccine so they can continue to work the pandemic’s front lines. But deciding which groups come next — the…
President Trump Says He’s Taking Hydroxychloroquine, Which Remains Unproven for Fighting COVID-19
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said Monday that he is taking a malaria drug to lessen symptoms should he get the new coronavirus, even though the drug is unproven for fighting COVID-19. Trump told reporters he has been taking the drug, hydroxychloroquine, and a zinc supplement daily “for about a week and a half now.”…
Want to win close elections in 2020 and beyond? Organize and invest in Native voters
The first political campaign I volunteered for was the 2002 race of former South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson. Seeing the potential of our own communities to be able to determine their own political future, I wanted to help any way I could. That election underscored just how significant the Native vote can be. With…
Trump throws Pompeo under bus, runs over him, backs up, runs over him again
Welp, congressional Democrats investigating why Donald Trump fired the State Department watchdog just got a whopper of a lead from the man who originally said he let the inspector general go because he had lost confidence in him. Asked why he thought Steve Linick needed to be removed, Trump offered a blunt response that surely…
Eric Trump claims his poor papa is being deprived of campaign rallies because of COVID-19 lockdowns
Eric Trump, the president’s son, spewed his usual nonsense on Fox News Sunday, this time to advocate for the senior Trump’s all-so-important right to campaign during the coronavirus pandemic. During the interview, Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization, accused Democrats of trying to “milk” needed coronavirus lockdowns for “everything they can.” “And you…
Afghan President and Rival Announce Power-Sharing Deal After Both Claim Victory in Election
(KABUL, Afghanistan) — Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and political rival Abdullah Abdullah signed a power-sharing agreement, two months after both declared themselves the winner of last September’s presidential election, Ghani’s spokesman said Sunday. The political deal would see Ghani remain president of the war-torn nation, tweeted his spokesman Sediq Sediqqi. The deal also calls for…
Democratic governors hit with flurry of legal challenges to coronavirus lockdowns
The raging public debate over statewide coronavirus lockdowns is running parallel to a series of legal battles in state capitals — and the lockdown skeptics got a big boost this week. The decision by Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to toss Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide shelter-in-place order set off a scramble in cities across the…
ICYMI: Integrating America’s whitest states, meat plant workers speak out, and more from Prism
As the COVID-19 pandemic has raged on around the country, Prism has been on the ground covering the stories that matter most to the communities at risk, and keeping a finger on the pulse of the other major news unfolding against the backdrop of the virus. In case you missed it, here’s a roundup of…
Spotlight on Green News & Views: Bison born in Saskatoon; Big Oil’s useless ‘net zero’ goals
This is the 643rd edition of the Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue). Here is the May 9 edition. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it. OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES Dan Bacher writes—Big Oil expected to claim $1.5 billion in…
Mike Pompeo ‘urged’ Trump firing of inspector general asked to investigate Mike Pompeo
On Saturday, The New York Times reported what we probably should have presumed all along: It was Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who “urged” Donald Trump to fire the State Department’s inspector general, continuing the widespread purge of government officials responsible for oversight of the impeached president and his team of corrupt incompetents. The…
Top Trump Administration Officials Disagree on Whether the CDC’s COVID-19 Response ‘Let the Country Down’
Does the Trump Administration believe the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) let the country down with its coronavirus response? It depends on who you ask. The CDC has faced mounting criticism during the pandemic for first delivering a test that failed to accurately detect the novel coronavirus, and then for the speed…
Don’t expect Trump world to rescue Richard Burr
Donald Trump’s allies don’t much like Richard Burr. But they’d prefer the president keep out of the criminal investigation of the senator. The revelation that Burr was under FBI investigation for potential insider trading rocked Capitol Hill on Thursday. But Trump, who often relishes commenting on the news of the day, was restrained when asked…
DHS begins collecting DNA from undocumented immigrants after whistleblower complaints
The Department of Homeland Security is inching toward implementation of a decades-old law directing it to collect DNA from the undocumented immigrants arrested by its officers. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has started a small pilot project in Dallas to collect DNA samples of undocumented immigrants who are arrested. And Customs and Border Protection started…
McConnell busted, he replaces one outrageous lie with another
This past Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was a lying sack of crap. “They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that’s no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game…